Actor Al Pacino, right, cheers at the crowd as he arrives with actress Jessica Chastain for the screening of the movie Wilde Salome at the 68th edition of the Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy, Sunday. — AP VENICE, Italy — Al Pacino's movie “Wilde Salome” is a complicated examination of Oscar Wilde's once-forbidden play about illicit love and revenge. But his inspiration was simple: Jessica Chastain. “There is Jessica Chastain, who I really believe is the reason I made the movie,” Pacino said Sunday ahead of the film's long-awaited world premier in a side event at the Venice Film Festival. “As soon as I met her, and saw her, I thought: This is the person to play ‘Salome' and I must get her to play it before the world picks up on her — which it has done — and turns her into the next big star.” “Wilde Salome” has been so long in the making that the role was Chastain's first on film. She is, of course, by now a familiar face to moviegoers, having appeared in Terrence Malick's recent sprawling drama “The Tree of Life” and now in theaters with “The Debt” and “The Help.” Chastain said she and Pacino workshopped the play for over a year, in New York and Los Angeles, then rehearsed for a month on stage before filming on a soundstage, which made her very familiar with the character. Pacino's “Wilde Salome” defies easy definition, weaving together a documentary on Wilde's life, footage of a reading of the play in Los Angeles and a film version of the play. In a ceremony in Venice on Sunday evening, Pacino was awarded the Jaeger-Lecoultre Glory to the Filmmaker 2011 prize, in recognition of his contributions to contemporary cinema.
